Steve grimaced in pain at the weight bearing down on his shield. Even with his right hand bracing it as well as his left, the sheer amount of rubble that had fallen on he and Nat was almost overwhelming. Almost. Gritting his teeth, he pushed back.
Slowly, he felt the concrete that was burying him and Nat shift slightly and he slid his feet into a better position, allowing him to twist his shoulder just so. Pushing up with his legs, using his arms and shoulders to brace his shield, Steve heaved.
As more and more of the concrete and rubble shifted away, Steve began to believe that the two of them were going to survive. He'd been 'made' here at Camp Lehigh; he wasn't going to die here, despite S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best efforts.
And wasn't that something that he would have thought inconceivable less than a day ago. S.H.I.E.L.D., the world's top spy agency, the very organisation that Peggy had help found, the company that he now worked for and had dedicated his life to since waking, wasn't what he thought it was.
No. It was HYDRA. Or at least, HYDRA had grown inside it, subverting it, using it for its own ends and purposes. Zola had admitted as much, with files as evidence, right before the bomb had hit the building that he and Nat were in.
The two of them had followed the trail from the encrypted drive that Fury had given Steve right before he'd died. The trail led here, to Camp Lehigh, one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s very first secret bases, the base where Armin Zola's mind had been preserved on banks of servers. With all that Steve had seen since waking from his seventy year nap, the sad thing was that that wasn't even the strangest.
Zola had obviously alerted S.H.I.E.L.D. to their location and kept them distracted by telling them the truth of HYDRA while the S.H.I.E.L.D. jets had got into position. Only Nat's realising that a missile was headed right for them, combined with Steve's improvisation of the two of them taking shelter in a small trough in the floor had saved them.
Assuming that Steve could get rid of the building that had fallen on them, that is. S.H.I.E.L.D. would be coming, he knew, if only to ensure that the mission was a success.
With one final push, the concrete block that Steve was pushing against slid to the side. Dust and bits of dirt and concrete rained down, but that he could handle. The sound of engines in the distance had Steve quickly bending and scooping the unconscious Nat up in his arms. Then, with the lights from the approaching quinjets strafing the ground as they approached, Steve ran for it.
ooo00ooo
Nat couldn't help but groan as she slowly regained consciousness. Everything hurt and she grimaced. A hand came up and brushed her forehead, feeling the still slight stickiness there. Blood. Her blood. But mostly stopped, so it'd been a while.
And then the last few minutes of memory came flooding back – the missile incoming, jumping into the hole, the two of them trying to share the small space under Steve's shield as rocks, bits of concrete, an entire building rained down around them and on top of them.
The slight movement and the sound of an engine told her that she was out of that destruction.
Cracking one eye open, she saw that she was in a car, a very familiar car, the car that Steve had 'borrowed' to get them to Camp Lehigh.
"Steve?" she asked croakily, looking across at him in the driver's seat.
"You okay?" he asked, looking at her, concern etched on his face and in his eyes.
"I'll live," she replied, a statement that was true enough. "We're still alive."
She'd made the statement and shook her head at it. Really, they shouldn't be. Probably the only thing that had saved them was the fact that they'd been so far underground when the missile hit. That and Steve's indestructible shield.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to kill us," Nat stated.
"Not S.H.I.E.L.D, HYDRA," Steve corrected.
"Is there much of a difference?" she asked as she straightened in her seat. "From what Zola was saying, S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA are pretty much the same thing these days."
"I don't believe that every agent is HYDRA. You're not, I'm not. I think we can agree that Fury wasn't," Steve stated.
"There's no way that Clint is either," Nat said, at the same time wondering how many of her friends, how many of the people that she'd worked with, were.
She looked out the window as she tried to process it. She'd been sure that she'd been working for the good guys these last years, but apparently, she couldn't even trust that anymore.
"Where are we headed?" she asked.
"DC," Steve answered simply.
"What's the plan?" she asked.
"We need a place to lay low until we can find out what Zola's algorithm does," Steve replied.
"My safehouses are probably compromised," she cautioned.
"I know. I've got an idea. A friend. Sort of," Steve replied.
Nat raised an eyebrow at him. That wasn't exactly much of a plan, but then, on second thought, an acquaintance might not be being monitored by S.H.I.E.L.D., HYDRA, whoever.
"What then?" Nat asked. "What do we do once we find out what this algorithm is for? I know the two of us are good, but even we can't take on all of HYDRA by ourselves."
Steve glanced at her and she saw the pain and determination in his eyes. He'd spent World War Two combatting HYDRA, even given his very life or at least a frozen seventy years of it and had believed them defeated, the mission complete. Obviously, it hadn't been.
"I know. We're going to need help," Steve stated.
Nat stared at him for a moment.
"I'll make a call, shall I?" she asked, fishing her phone out of her pocket.
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